HINKSEY CATHOLIC PARISH OXFORD
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Corpus Christi 2008
Like a rabbit caught in car headlights, I’ve become mesmerised by the television programme, The Apprentice. How could a seemingly intelligent man like Sir Alan Sugar want to employ any of the “apprentices” on offer? They’re awful!
The height of lunacy and surrealism was reached a couple of weeks ago when each team was sent to the souk in Marrakech to barter for, and buy a list of products at the lowest price.
One of the items was a kosher chicken….
Now kosher is the way of killing an animal so that no blood remains in it. This is to meet the Jewish religious laws that prohibit eating anything with blood in it because, to them, the very life of something is in its blood.
None of the apprentices knew what kosher meant, including a young man who’d promoted himself as “a good Jewish boy” on his CV, no doubt to impress – although it failed miserably – Sir Alan, himself a Jew.
Their solution was to get a Muslim butcher to bless it as they’d figured out that kosher was something vaguely religious, so any religion would do.
Then last weekend Princess Anne’s son, 11th. in line to the Throne, married a Canadian woman.
Nothing spectacular in that you might say; except that she was a Catholic, and gave up her faith so that he wouldn’t be ineligible for the Throne.
Catholics are forbidden by the law of this land from being the Monarch, or ascending the Throne, if they’re married to a Catholic.
Dicky Arbiter, former Royal Press Secretary, commenting on this said, religion is a personal choice – which indeed it is – and, besides which, if you believe in God it doesn’t matter what Faith or Church you belong to, does it?
It reminded me of Jesus’ words: “I came into the world to testify to the truth.” And Pilate’s world-weary reply: “What is truth?” Jn. 18: 37
For me, these two very contemporary examples go to the very core of what Jesus is saying in the Gospel about Himself, the Bread of Life, which we celebrate today in this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Corpus Christi demands that we answer the question Jesus puts to us: “What about you? Who do you say I am?” Mt. 16: 15
When you eat that little bit of bread, and take a sip of wine at communion time do you really believe that you’re eating and drinking God?
The Apprentice, and Dicky Arbiter bring into sharp relief the overwhelming attitude today, that to believe in God at all makes you a bit simple; but if you do, it doesn’t matter what you believe about him, her, it, them.
Do what you have to do to win the race of life – whatever it takes.
But that’s not what Jesus asks of us who follow Him.
He gives us the command to win the race of eternal life by seeking the truth through Him, and telling us: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Jn. 14: 6
In the Gospel given for today we meet the concept of kosher again, just as the apprentices did in Marrakech.
Jesus says to the Jewish religious leaders – those who should have known He was the Messiah because they were the Old Testament experts, and all of it points to Him: “I say to you, unless you eat the flesh [of me] the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I shall raise them up on the last day.” Jn. 6: 53 – 54
No preaching religious platitudes. No saying you can believe, or not believe, what you like.
What Jesus says here is like the boxer, Ricky Hatton, delivering the knock out punch in a world title fight.
He’s saying I am God, and you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.
If you do, you possess eternal life now and, not only that, if you remain faithful to me I will raise you up on the last day, just as I’m going to be raised up by my Father from my tomb after my Crucifixion.
Of course, the people were astounded because here was what appeared to be a mere man asking them, not only to commit cannibalism by eating His flesh, but by flouting all they held holy about the kosher law by drinking His blood!
To them it was so horrendous they couldn’t comprehend it. No wonder they wanted Jesus dead for speaking such blasphemy against God.
I guess Jesus’ words in the Gospel today haven’t shocked us because we’ve heard them so often – but they should.
The all-holy God made Himself completely vulnerable by taking flesh in His Mother’s womb, and being born as a baby.
He was totally vulnerable when He allowed Himself to be crucified for us so that we can possess the eternal life He promises to us in the Gospel
He’s amongst us now making Himself completely vulnerable still by taking flesh under the appearance of bread and wine at every Eucharist.
The flesh of the Eucharist, which is the same, yet radically not the same, as the fleshly Jesus speaking in the Gospel.
The flesh and blood of Jesus we eat and feed upon in the Eucharist isn’t the physical flesh and blood of the earthly Jesus, but the spiritual, Holy Spirit- filled flesh and blood of the heavenly Son of Man.
Different, yet the same – but just as real – as the fleshly Jesus who walked this earth in the Holy Land.
Why? Because, speaking of Himself through the words of Scripture, the Lord says: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever.” Heb. 13: 8
Earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave the only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be destroyed, but may have eternal life.” Jn. 3: 16
The Cross, the Empty Tomb, and the Body and Blood of Christ made real in the Eucharist are all inextricably bound together for the salvation of the world.
To reach out to everyone to give them the life-changing opportunity of meeting Jesus as their Saviour, Redeemer, and Friend so that He can give them eternal life.
This is what the Church exists for. This is what we Christians exist for.
When we come to receive Jesus under the appearance of bread and wine lets really give thanks – give Eucharist – that we have this treasure given to us as free gift.
Not to be kept to ourselves as a little pious pleasure, but offered to a world that is sorely in need of the healing power of Christ through the manner in which each of us lives out the fact that we’re called personally by Him.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jn. 6: 68 – 69
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9th. Sunday in Ordinary Time
It never ceases to surprise me how ideas for sermons come into my head in the most unexpected ways, and from the most unexpected sources.
In fact, the inspiration for this sermon came from that larger-than-life singing superstar, Dolly Parton who, incidentally, I’m going to see in concert next month.
This week I was driving along the A34 listening to her new album called Backwoods Barbie, and the song: Jesus and Gravity.
It’s autobiographical, and really talks about how she’s built her life on the solid-rock of Jesus. She’s got Jesus and gravity.
Jesus uses the circumstances of her life – like the pull of gravity – to keep her feet on the ground.
When she starts thinking, it’s all down to me, then He knocks her right back on her knees in prayer and thanksgiving because all her success is from His hand.
As her song says: “I’ve got Jesus and gravity. He’s my friend, He’s my light, He’s my wings, He’s my flight.” Dolly Parton: Jesus and Gravity
Catholics used to be accused of an attitude of triumphalism, almost arrogance; and, to some extent, people still have that perception of us.
They have this idea of the Catholic Church as a monolithic structure, symbolised by the Pope wearing a three-tier gold and gem encrusted tiara as a symbol of power, and being carried around in his seda gestatoria – his processional chair.
The reality is that we’re wearing our faith like an old pair of comfortable slippers.
Thank God that those days of triumphalism – if they ever existed in the first place – have gone; but many of us have become complacent, and are content to say we’re Christians without shedding too much of our pagan culture in the process.
As Jesus says in the Gospel: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Mt. 7: 21
I don’t live in an ivory tower; I know that we’re going through a recession, in all but name, with prices going up every day, and mortgage payments – if you can get a mortgage – becoming harder to meet.
I know that some parents have said goodbye to their children as they go out for an enjoyable evening, only to get the police knocking on the door telling them their son’s been stabbed to death in the street.
I know we’ve witnessed “natural” disasters on a monumental scale in Burma and China; perhaps prompting us to ask ourselves in the wee small hours of the morning: “Where is God in all this?”
So, in the face of all this, we might very easily be tempted to go on saying, Lord, Lord, to hedge our bets in case there is a God, even though we might be thinking otherwise.
But Jesus is quite clear. He doesn’t want us to pay lip-service to Him by saying He’s our Lord, but not really meaning it.
What He wants is honesty on our part, and that’s what He means where He says in today’s Gospel: “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.” Mt. 7: 24
The person who really put me on the path to being Ordained was a former Catholic Chaplain to the University, Walter Drumm.
It was, to recall the title of another song: The Long and Winding Road to my Ordination on 30 June 1995; but that’s a story for another day.
Father Walter was one of the people instrumental in getting the American evangelist, Billy Graham, to conduct a mission to Oxford University in the early 1980’s.
Although I wasn’t strictly at that point in training for Ordination, Walter got me into a seminar Billy Graham did for Ordinands of any Church training in Oxford.
At that session Billy Graham used our Gospel for today as his starting point to take us on a grand tour of salvation history in the Bible; the “story” of the salvation wrought for us by Jesus.
His conclusion was that to understand God, and His world, we have to have the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.
To make sense of the world, and its suffering, we cannot do so without seeing that what Jesus was contending against, and we His followers are contending against too, is not just what we see on the surface of events. Jesus, through His words in John’s Gospel, makes crystal clear what He is contending against: “The time [Jesus says] for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” Jn. 12: 31 – 32
What we see on the surface of world, and personal, events obscures the elemental battle that rages between the Lord, and the prince of this world, Satan.
But the battle has been ultimately won through the Cross of Christ.
And only with the eyes of a faith built on the rock of Jesus Christ, and His Cross and Resurrection, can we truly understand what is going on in the world.
We cannot, and must not, be content with a carpet slipper faith that gives us the illusion of comfort, but in reality is built on shifting sand.
In fact, that sort of faith is worse than that. It’s not just built on shifting sand: it’s built on quicksand.
That sort of sand that’s found in the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay.
It looks OK when the sun’s out, and the tide’s miles away. Then the storm clouds roll in, along with the raging tide, and that harmless looking quicksand sucks us down, and we are no more.
Further on in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus asks the Disciples who they think He is, and Peter – who’s name means “rock” in Greek – speaks up for them, and says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Mt. 16: 16
This confession of faith is the bedrock upon which the Church, the living Temple, the community who follow Jesus the Lord, is built.
And, it will last eternally, because it’s built on the foundation of Jesus Christ Himself, and: “All the powers of hell will not conquer it.” Mt. 16: 18
This is the rock of faith we have to build our own lives upon so that we can be assured that the Lord loves us.
If we build on that foundation, our lives will be built upon the rock of Jesus’ promise at the end of Matthew’s Gospel before His Ascension: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Mt. 28: 20 Then we’ll really know Jesus. For: “He is my life, He is my God, He is my wings, He is my flight. I’ve got Jesus and that’s all I need.” Dolly Parton: Jesus and Gravity
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11th. Sunday in Ordinary Time
Father Paul is always amazed at how we always remember his Birthday, Wedding and Ordination Anniversaries. The reason we remember is really very simple.
We have one of these perpetual Birthday and Anniversary calendars on our kitchen door to remind us not to forget important celebrations during the coming month.
There’s one Anniversary, though, that slipped by without any fuss, and that’s the 55th. Anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June.
The fact that it did glide by illustrates the ambivalent relationship we have with our Queen.
I may be very wrong, but I think a lot of people look on her with discreet affection and benign indifference.
We’re not afraid of the Queen, but I guess we feel she’s a rather remote person who would be difficult, if not impossible, to get to know.
She’s performs excellently for us on great State occasions, but we don’t have her in our thoughts every day, or indeed every week, month or year.
I wonder if we also have the same relationship with God?
I wonder if we know that He is: “The Father of mercies and the God of all comfort?” 2 Cor. 1: 3
I wonder if we believe Him when He tells us, as He does in the Book of Exodus today, that we’re His: “Special treasure.” His: “Treasured possession.” Ex. 19: 5
Or do we treat the Lord as we treat The Queen: with discreet affection and benign indifference?
The Gospel today says: “When Jesus saw the crowds he felt sorry for them.”
But sorry is such a very weak word.
A much better way of putting it is to say that Jesus had compassion on them.
And that compassion God has for us in Christ reached its zenith on the Cross when: “God demonstrated his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died on our behalf!” Rm. 5: 8
While we were still sinners…..
We don’t have to try and make ourselves perfect to come to Jesus, and even if we tried, we’d fail.
When He called the Twelve Apostles, none of them were perfect and sinless.
They, and we, come to Him, just as we are, so that He can love us, and we can fall in love with Him.
Jesus had compassion on the crowds because: “They were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Mt. 9: 36
Jesus looked at the pain, suffering and lost-ness of His people and longed to take their place in their suffering and sin.
Our moment in time is no different to His, except that we have the suffering of the world beamed relentlessly into our homes through our televisions.
Sometimes it’s overwhelming, and we ask ourselves why God doesn’t do something about it?
Jesus doesn’t just ignore our questioning; but He looks at us with love, and asks: “What are you going to do about it?
After all, He says, you who bear my name through your Baptism are my hands, eyes, voice, and heart in the world. I can’t do anything without you.
Trouble is, although we’re called to be in the world as salt and light, too often we’ve lost our taste, and our light has gone out because we’ve forgotten who we are, and what we’re here to do.
I think we’ve become cosy, living with the status quo: not exactly telling Jesus we can do without Him, but certainly keeping Him at a distance, and treating Him with discreet affection and benign indifference.
I know it’s not easy saying you're a Christian these days, but most people only show us benign indifference don’t they?
We don’t face losing our lives in this country for the sake of Christ.
To my mind we seem to have lost the desire for other people to have that loving relationship of friendship with the Lord that we should be experiencing.
It’s as if we’re in a loveless marriage; yet the lack of love isn’t on the Lord’s side, it’s on ours.
Really, the sort of relationship Christians should have with Jesus Christ is like a good marriage; but good marriages have to be worked at otherwise they shrivel and die, don’t they?
Just as our friendship with Jesus has to be built up through prayer, reflecting on Scripture, and coming together to be fed through worshipping Him as our Lord and Saviour in the Eucharist.
If we all work at that, then by becoming attractive Christians we’ll attract other people to Him.
Make no mistake, people are searching for meaning and purpose, and are as much sheep without a shepherd as they were when Jesus walked this earth.
What drew them to Jesus weren’t just His words, but also His attractiveness; His loving kindness; His compassion; His humanity.
We must see ourselves as the Lord’s: “Own special treasure.” Ex. 19: 5
Then, when we’ve let that fact sink into our very being, we’ll begin to rejoice in our salvation because we’ll know Jesus as our Saviour.
“Salvation – deliverance from the reality of evil, and the gift of new life and freedom in Christ – is at the heart of the Gospel.”
Pope Benedict XVI: Meeting with American Bishops, Washington DC 16 April 2008
But how can we understand and explain what Saviour means in concrete terms? Well, let me give you an example.
In the film Schindler’s List, which is based on real-life events in the Second World War, a group of Jewish women have been released from Auschwitz against all odds, and are travelling on a train to what they’ve been told is a factory where they’ll work for the government.
The train stops at a remote location with concrete buildings, and they see SS guards by the gate.
Their hearts drop into their stomachs as they suspect it’s all been a cruel hoax. A grotesque practical joke played by the Nazis.
And then a man steps forward – It’s Oskar Schindler – and he says to them: “You have nothing more to worry about. You are with me now.”
To them, and many, many others he saved in the same way, Oskar Schindler was their saviour.
In the midst of all the horror of the Nazi regime, and the hell of Auschwitz, he looked upon people with compassion, and snatched them out the hands of those who would have destroyed them.
So many people in our world feel troubled, abandoned, betrayed, and like sheep without a shepherd.
Jesus looks upon them, and all of us, with the same compassion and understanding as He did to those He met in the Gospels.
He speaks to us with the voice of love incarnate, and says to us: “You have nothing more to worry about. You are with me now.”
If we would only listen to, and respond to that voice of saving love, then we would truly know Jesus as our Saviour.
We would know in our hearts that we’re the Lord’s special treasure.
Then, the joy and hope that friendship with Jesus brings will flow out from us to everyone we meet, so that they too will come to know that they are the Lord’s: “Special treasure.” Ex. 19: 5
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Saints Peter and Paul 2008
Simon Peter, renamed Kephas – Peter the Rock – by Jesus, upon whom, through his profession of faith that Jesus is the Lord, the Church is founded.
Saul, renamed Paul after his conversion, and who fell in love with the very Jesus he’d once persecuted through those who confessed that Jesus is the Lord.
From the earliest times of Christianity these two men were always linked together as the bedrock of the Church in Rome because they gave their lives for Christ in that city.
Unlike Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of pagan Rome who were suckled by a she-wolf, Peter and Paul fed on Jesus Christ, the true Bread of Life: “The food that remains for eternal life.” Jn. 6: 27
Peter and Paul were both very different people with different personalities, and sometimes had the knack of rubbing each other up the wrong way, as Paul tells us in his Letter to the Galatians.
It just shows that Christians aren’t clones made from a mould that conforms to a particular model.
Indeed, as Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians. All of us are: “God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2: 10
What bound Peter and Paul together was their love for Christ, which led them to give up their lives for Him rather than give up their Christian faith.
An ancient tradition in the Roman Church says that on 29 June AD64, Peter and Paul were taken from the Mamertine Prison, and said farewell for the last time.
Peter was taken to the west of the city, where he was crucified upside down in the Circus Vaticanus, which was on the site where St Peter’s and the Vatican stand today.
He was then buried in the pagan cemetery that was just outside the Circus.
His bones now lay in the spot where he was buried, above which was built the Papal High Altar in St. Peter's.
Paul was taken to the east, and martyred just outside Rome at a place called Tre Fontane, which is still there to this day.
As Paul was a Roman citizen he was allowed a rather more dignified death than Peter.
He was beheaded, and that’s why in Christian art he’s always shown holding a sword in his hand.
A Roman Christian woman called Lucina buried Paul in a small vineyard on her estate.
Above his grave the Basilica of St. Paul was built in 384 AD when the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire had finally ended.
I've visited the Basilica of St. Paul's many times and looked down into the burial site of Paul under the High Altar.
On several occasions I’ve been privileged to be able to go right under the Papal High Altar in St. Peter's, and into that ancient pagan cemetery that was excavated in the 1940’s, and stand a foot or two away from the bones of Peter.
To be able to stand so close to mortal remains of Peter and Paul forges an unbreakable, tangible link with the Lord, whom they followed, and we follow today
The Basilicas of Peter & Paul, which house their mortal remains, are wonderful works of art and architecture, but that isn't where their true beauty lies.
If they were ever destroyed, would it matter? As works of art, yes, but ultimately, no.
They're spaces, which point to something much more lasting. These stone and marble buildings are not what matters in the end.
They should direct us beyond themselves, and even beyond the mortal remains of Peter & Paul, to something eternal. To: “Christ, the Living Stone” 1 Peter 2: 4
If Christ, the Living Stone, is securely keyed into our lives then we: “Like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ” 1 Peter 2: 5
We can learn from Peter & Paul that what really matters is to be faithful to Christ as they were, and to love Him as He first loved us.
And, like Peter and Paul, we have to take the love, life, and message of Jesus into an alien culture just as they did when they went to Rome.
Paul, writing to the Philippians whilst under house arrest in Rome, said: “Rejoice at all times in the Lord; again I shall say: rejoice!” Phil. 4: 4
Two years or so later, in a dungeon in the Marmertine prison next to the Roman Forum awaiting his death, he wrote to his friend Timothy: “The time for my death has come. I have kept the faith. To [the Lord] be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.” 2 Tim. 4: 6, 7 & 18
Joy and hope in the Lord shining through in impossible circumstances.
In this era of the history of the Church we see lots of people falling away from the Christian faith, and lukewarmness in others.
There are many reasons for this: but, whatever those reasons are it makes us unhappy, fearful for the future of Christianity.
We feel as the Disciples did when they were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus was asleep in the boat, seemingly unaware and uncaring, about what might happen to the Disciples. But when it was at its height He awoke and stilled the storm. See Lk. 8: 22 – 25
When the Church, the Ark of Christ, seems to be in the midst of storms, Jesus is still in control.
Maybe, through the storms, He’s trying to teach us to hold fast to Him.
In the Scripture readings today we can hear the voice of Jesus telling us to listen to Him through the storms.
To keep: “Earnestly praying” Acts 12: 5 for each other as the Church did for Peter and Paul during their imprisonment in their death cells.
Prayer opens our hearts to enable us to say to Jesus as Peter did: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Mt. 16: 16 so that Jesus can become the rock on which we build our lives.
The chains holding us in fear fall off, and we can go into the world with the security of having Jesus as our friend.
Then, at our life’s end, we receive the crown of righteousness from that same friend. And it’s not just reserved for the great saints like Paul, because he said so: “[It’s] not just for me [he wrote] but all those who have longed for his appearing.” 2 Tim. 4: 8
May this Feast of Peter & Paul be a moment for each of us to reflect on our faith, and to once again – or maybe even for the very first time in our life – fall in love with Jesus Christ.
To give thanks for the Lord’s “appearing” in the Eucharist under the form of bread and wine; and to look forwards, with hope, to His “appearing” when He takes us to Himself to give us the gift of eternal life.
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